Several Wall Street analysts spent much of Thanksgiving weekend observing Apple's sales and inventory levels. The team led by Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank conducted a comprehensive survey of 100 Apple stores and 50 resellers, obtaining responses such as "iPads sell like candy" and "MacBook Airs fly off the shelves."
The most helpful report came from Gene Munster's team at Piper Jaffray, apparently the only ones who bothered to do a sales report and got the following results:
MacBook Airs were selling at a rate of 8.2 units per hour per store, in 2009 that rate was 8.3, and 13 in 2008. “While MacBook Air sales were unchanged year-on-year, we think that is too much soon to determine the December quarter.
While iPads were leaving stores at an even faster rate, at 8.8 units per hour. There are, of course, no other Black Friday iPad sales to compare with, but Munster believes those numbers match his prediction that Apple will sell 5.5 million iPads this quarter.
Source: Cnnexpansion.com
I never would have guessed that the MacBook Air sold more last year (and more so in 2008) than this year.